Essential says that the beta program helped to accelerate the progress of developing Oreo for the Essential Phone, but during this testing, it "discovered several stability issues in Oreo 8.0 that we believe will be addressed in Oreo 8.1."

As a result of this, the public rollout for Android 8.0 has been canceled and Essential will instead release 8.1 in its place.

Similar to 8.0, Essential will be running an Oreo 8.1 beta to gather feedback before rolling it out to the public. Essential says that it hopes to get the beta started late next week, and if you're already enrolled in the 8.0 beta, you should receive an OTA update to move up to 8.1.

It is disappointing to hear that it'll be a while longer before the majority of Essential Phone users can get their hands on Oreo, but then again, it probably makes more sense for Essential to do this rather than going through the whole process of perfecting 8.0 to just turn around and immediately focus on an 8.1 release.

Then again, that's just my opinion. What do you think about Essential's decision here?